Nominal Patch Notes — July 20, 2021
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
First, I give my sincerest thanks and appreciation to everyone who has given Nominal a chance. You all have helped immensely with your feedback, bug reports, requests, suggestions, and more. I really can't understate my thanks.
Nominal is the very first game that I've developed, so this entire experience has taught me so, so much: how to manage social media, how to get everything set up on Steam's backend, how to moderate a community, how to support a product, and so on and so forth. I'm incredibly grateful for Nominal, what it's taught me, what it's done for me, and for this little community that it has brought together.
All this said, I have to get to the tough part of this message. Things have been quiet, because on top of real life matters (like moving and taking care of my mental health), I have been trying to figure out how to best proceed, not just for Nominal, but also Offworld Systems.
In the spirit of honesty and transparency, I realize that I seriously pigeon-holed myself with Nominal (a niche simulation/party game). As a result, it's extremely hard to determine how to best expand it, while maintaining replay and new player appeal. Party games, especially manual-based ones, can only have so many gameplay aspects to them.
As a result, Nominal has done relatively well for it being my first game, and limited in scope and appeal. But interest has declined sharply and I've hit a wall with actionable ideas (for one person to implement). And I'm not crying or complaining about that, that's just how products and markets work. But unlike a more traditional, broader-scoped game, there's not much I can do to save it from flatlining -- at least not in a timely enough manner that allows me to continue developing and expanding it, while being able to keep Offworld from going under and keep me from having to go back to working a corporate 9-5 (which is fantastic for some people, but just doesn't work for my mental health).
So what's a solo, indie dev to do?
I have been mulling this over for weeks, and it's not an easy decision to make. I truly do care a lot for each and every one of you who took a chance on this game, so it's been extremely difficult to come to this realization, but the hard truth is that I can't continue on this path if I only focus on Nominal. I have a lot of fun and big ideas for better and more immersive, expansive, and infinitely-playable games (that I know a lot of you in our community would seriously enjoy). But those kinds of projects take a lot of time. And time takes a lot of money on the back-end to keep living. So, I've come to the very hard decision not to abandon Nominal, but to pause active development on it for now, so that I can focus on more promising projects.
I am truly sorry to have to make this decision, but it's for the best, so that I can come back in the future and give you all a bunch of better, more exciting experiences. I really appreciate all of you, and I really hope you understand.
Moving forward, what all does this really mean for Nominal? Well, as I've already stated, new features and expanded gameplay development will be paused. Technical support, bug fixes, and things like that I will always support (I don't believe in leaving something with my name on it in a non-working or poor state, especially if I'm charging money for it. I stand by my products.) In addition to the development pause, The price will also be permanently dropped to $5USD.
I originally priced Nominal at $15, thinking I would be able to rapidly expand it, market it, broaden its appeal, and make it a larger game than it was at launch. But that mistake was on me and my naivety. I dropped the price to $9.99 thinking that I would do those same things, but on a longer, lower-pressure time frame, but I think the original price had already locked in public opinion on the game. So, I've chosen $5USD to leave it at while development is paused, as I think that's a fair price for the amount of content that is present and fleshed out (I believe in the $1 per hour of gameplay ideal for the most part, and I think it'd be quite easy for the average player to pick up a copy and play it with their friends over a few game nights and rack up those hours).
I understand that this drop may be disappointing or seem unfair to some of you, but I hope that you understand my reasoning here. It's not about a smash-and-grab cash run, it's not about trying to screw anyone over. It's about me having learned from this experience and correcting Offworld's path so that I can continue to deliver great experiences for everyone.
All in all, I really do apologize for having to make these decisions. I hope you all understand.
As my first grassroots community, I will of course keep the Discord server alive, respond to questions, help anyone out that I can, and fix any problems that pop up.
I couldn't have even gotten to the point of having to make this call if it weren't for you guys taking a chance on Nominal. I would have had to go right back to job hunting. So thank you. Really, truly, thank you.
If you have any questions or concerns about anything I've said here, please reach out to me on our Discord, via Twitter, or on the Community Hub.
Most sincerely,
Brian @ Offworld Systems LLC